Today’s blog title, arXiv:1611.02269, was a teaser to get your attention. The article itself is a brain teaser. This long awaited scientific article by Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist Erik Verlinde explains why the big-bang, dark matter, and gravity do not exist. It’s potentially huge news, albeit for some.
I have been thinking about analogies to explain this to myself, a non-scientist. I have come up with two as the third one made perfect sense to me, right away: what you cannot see, does not exist (ie, dark matter). Especially, when that something would account for 96% of everything. An easy one.
The “easiest” explanation is gravity. We all know gravity from the theories of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Newton’s gravity is earthbound. Gravity in the Universe is a different issue. The image that came to my mind after reading about Erik Verlinde’s theory was a glass of water and an object inside. This object either floats or sinks in that glass of water. Essentially, it reshapes the structure of (visible) matter.
The third one is more complex: the “big-bang” theory, and I’m not referring to the great TV series. Any explosion would not show an accelerating increase in speed. If anything, it should be an accelerating decrease in speed – until it stops. The images that came to my mind were twofold: the birth of any human being starts by just melting two cells together.
After melting these 2 cells an accelerating increase in speed happens. NCBI: “A current estimation of human total cell number calculated for a variety of organs and cell types is presented. These partial data correspond to a total number of 3.72 × 10^13” or 37 trillion cells.
The other image that came to my mind is the human brain. Allegedly, we only “use” 10% of our human brain (eg, Scientific American). This image also allowed me to make a mental jump to information and knowledge which are key components in Erik Verlinde’s theory.
I think (ie, facts), feel (ie, intuition), believe (ie, opinions), and dreamt (ie, imagination) that all 4 categories represent Erik Verlinde’s theory of building blocks of information in the universe.
Picture this: the WWW connects information stored on computers all over planet Earth. The Universe Wide Web connects all information from all over the Universe.
This feels so good !
Chuck Mangione – Feels So Good (1977) – artist, AllMusic, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
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